The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was an initiative seed-funded for three years by the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1983-1986.^[1] The fund was a collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and WGBH TV, and Boston’s Public Television Station.

Kathy Rae Huffman was appointed curator/producer with a mandate to create a context for artists to define television as a medium for personal expression. The Fund was to increase visibility of artists work in television, to create larger distribution markets for artists television/video, and to experiment with methods for funding and self-sustaining strategies for media arts production.

Projects

Events, meetings of producers, and presentations were conducted. The following projects were commissioned, and co-produced by The CAT Fund, 1984-1991 (in alphabetical order):

• Laurie Anderson: What You Mean We? (video, produced in collaboration with Alive From Off Center, 1986)
• Burt Barr and James Benning: O Panama (video co-produced with New TV Workshop 1985)
• Dara Birnbaum: Will-O'-The-Wisp (video/installation, 1985)
• Peter D'Agostino: String Cycles (interactive work, 1991)
• Ken Feingold: Irony (TV narrative, 1985)
• Doug Hall: Storm and Stress (video, 1986)
• Joan Jonas: Double Lunar Dogs (video, 1984)
• Joan Logue: New England Fisherman: Spots (video portraits, 1985)
• Chip Lord and Mickey McGowen: Easy Living (video, 1984)
• Branda Miller: Time Squared (video for TIME CODE , 1987)
• Jacques Louise and Daniele Nyst: L'Image (video and computer animation, 1987)
• Marcel Odenbach: As If Memories Could Deceive Me (video and installation, 1986)
• Tony Oursler: EVOL (video, 1984)
• Tony Oursler and Constance DeJong: Relatives (video and performance, produced in collaboration with the exhibition BiNational: American Art of the Late 80’s, and toured internationally, 1988-1989)
• Daniel Reeves: Ganapati / a spirit in the bush (video, 1986)
• Raul Ruiz: Expulsion of the Moors The (installation with video, co-produced with IVAM (Valencia) and the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1990)
• Bill Seaman: The Watch Detail (interactive computer installation)
• Bill Seaman: The Water Catalogue (video, 1984)
• Ilene Segalove: More TV Stories (video, 1985)
• Michael Smith & William Wegman: The World of Photography (video, produced in collaboration with “Alive From Off Center”, 1986)
• Bill Viola: I Do Not Know What it is I Am Like (video, video laserdisc co-produced with The Voyager Co., 1986)

In 1997, The DeCordova Museum presented The CAT Fund, as part of its HIstory of Video Art in Boston series. Part II: The 1980s.

References